Category: Books, Movies, TV & Web

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Important Note:  They say that a film review is often more about the reviewer than the movie itself, so I want it “on the record” that I had nothing to do with the following review.  I didn’t write it; somebody else is responsible for the words and opinions that follow.  I didn’t write this introduction, either.  In fact, I strongly disapprove of this review, just as I disapprove of this introduction.

 

Anonymous Review of Love Scenes

There was a time when my pecker was perpetually primed, presumptuous, and problematic (I won’t say pretty), and it was all I could do to placate said pecker by preemptively programming the TV.  In other words, we (my penile pal and I) watched “Cinemax After Dark.”

On one such occasion, my persistent protuberance demanded that we view the 1984 movie Love Scenes.

Love Scenes is the story of film director Peter and his lovely wife, movie star Val.  Peter and Val have a boring sex life, so Peter decides to spice things up by casting Val in his latest project, a steamy potboiler co-starring the odious Rick, a preening prick who is, unaccountably, irresistible to women.

During one particularly steamy scene in Peter’s production, Val’s character is seduced by Rick’s character in the back room of an art museum.  (This scene occurs in an art museum because Love Scenes is a classy movie.)  Things get out of hand for the two actors, and they wind up having actual sex.

“I screwed Rick with everybody watching — the whole damned crew!” says Val, just in case we missed it.

Rather than get jealous, Peter gets turned on, and so did my phallic friend.  Peter pens more sex scenes into the plot for his wife.  He decides to insert a scene in which Val has sex with an old fart, a famous art collector named Count Orlando, while she lies rope-bound to a bed.

In other words, in choosing his next kinky fantasy for Val, Peter picks a pickled pecker.

Count Orlando makes his brief, wrinkled, full-frontally nude appearance, enjoys his time with Val, and exits the scene.

 

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All of this sex and nudity is puckishly perverse, and my pesky pulchritude was plenty pleased with all of these perversions.  But at times the film’s brilliant dialogue — sparkling with wit and sophistication — intrudes upon the more important elements:  sex and nudity.

Val:  “Peter, you’re my man.  Don’t forget it.”

Peter:  “Sounds like a line from a movie.”

Peter and Val:  (smiles and giggles)

When all was said and done, my penile projection was placated, although an Internet interview with star Tiffany Bolling cast a pall on my perceptions.

“The nudity bugged me, like in Love Scenes, and I would never do a film like that again,” Bolling pouted.  “The bottom line to it was that there was a lot of nudity in it, and a lot of simulated sex scenes … I don’t want people coming in and getting a joyride off of me trying to get my work done.”

To that, my pulsing pal and I say, “poppycock!”                Grade:  A

 

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Director:  Bud Townsend  Cast:  Tiffany Bolling, Franc Luz, Julie Newmar, Jack Carter, Daniel Pilon, Britt Ekland, Susan Benn, Carol Ann Susi, Laura Sorrenson, Monique Gabrielle  Release:  1984

 

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Fighter1

 

I’m sorry, but I don’t care if The Fighter is “based on a true story” – it’s a tired, tired tale.  If your idea of a good time is Turner Classic Movies at 2 a.m., watching Pat O’Brien as the good cop and James Cagney as the bad guy, two childhood friends who took separate paths in life, then by all means knock yourself out and buy a ticket to The Fighter.

Every boxing-movie cliché is here:  the colorful neighborhood residents, the training montages (jump rope, anyone?), the sparring montages, the overkill of period music.  Delete an F-bomb here and there, and we are right back at The Roxy watching Pat and Jimmy flicker on the silver screen.  But I suppose I shouldn’t blame director David O. Russell and his team of screenwriters for digging this plot out of mothballs.  If this formula has worked in so many movies past, why not dress it up and try to shovel in some fresh cash?

There’s been a lot of talk about the acting in this film.  Christian Bale, as bad brother Dicky, is fine.  Melissa Leo, as tough-as-nails Mom (she smokes – always the sign of a villain these days), is fine, although she was better in 2008’s Frozen River.  And Amy Adams shows off a fine Boston accent and looks great in her see-thru black bra and panties.

But all of this fine acting is brought down by that tired, tired story, and by an unconvincingly happy ending – even if it is based on a true story.      Grade:  C+

 

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Director:  David O. Russell  Cast:  Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Melissa Leo, Mickey O’Keefe, Jack McGee, Chanty Sok  Release:  2010

 

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Dead1

 

I don’t often get nostalgic, but if pushed I might get a bit sentimental about, oh … let’s say the year 1991.  That was the last time my favorite baseball team won a World Series (or even played in one).  I was on the verge of getting married back then, and buying my first house, and it was a year in which my future wife and I often went to the movies.  One of the films we saw in 1991 was made by a young married couple making a big splash in Hollywood.  They were considered the most glamorous film combo since Dick and Liz.

“Our modern equivalent of Sir Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh,” gushed the New York Daily News, referring to Irish actor Kenneth Branagh and his English wife, actress Emma Thompson.  (For you youngsters, Branagh and Thompson would go on to play Gilderoy Lockhart and Sybil Trelawney in the Harry Potter films.)

The Branagh-Thompson collaboration that we saw, Dead Again, is a silly film with a preposterous plot involving hypnosis, reincarnation, and an evil boy with a nasty stutter.  But if you buy into its premise – some mumbo jumbo about a 1940s murder and its resulting bad karma – the movie is a lot of fun.  Classically trained actor Branagh, who also directed, took a clever script by Scott Frank and delivered something special:  an entertaining puzzler with lots of thunder and lightning – even though it was filmed in sunny Los Angeles.  Watch the film twice if you can:  There is an excellent twist, and not until The Sixth Sense came along ten years later had a movie so rewarded second viewings.

But try not to weep (or laugh) at the ironic dialogue.  Says young Branagh to young Thompson:  “[We’ve] become two parts of the same person.  Nothing can separate [us], not even death.”

“So we’re stuck with each other?” she replies.

Alas, apparently not.  Branagh and Thompson divorced in 1995, and so did my wife and I.  My baseball team has not returned to the World Series.  There is, however, one thing unchanged since 1991.  Actor Derek Jacobi, who in Dead Again plays a scoundrel with a speech impediment, is still acting in films about stutterers.*       Grade:  B+

 

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Note:  Smokers, beware of this film.  I am a smoker and I’m not likely to quit anytime soon.  Having said that, there is an infamous scene in Dead Again featuring actor Andy Garcia that is so nauseating that it almost makes me want to chuck my smokes.

* Jacobi plays Archbishop Lang in The King’s Speech.

 

Director:  Kenneth Branagh   Cast:  Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, Andy Garcia, Derek Jacobi, Wayne Knight, Hanna Schygulla, Robin Williams, Campbell Scott, Jo Anderson, Christine Ebersole  Release:  1991

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Kings1

 

Just as with any other good presentation, The King’s Speech uses multiple strategies to win over its audience.  The first ploy is an appeal to patriotism:  You don’t have to be a British subject to choose sides in a film about World War II.  The second strategy is to charm the pants off of you.  In this regard, the movie has an unbeatable combo in the odd couple portrayed by Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush.

Firth stars as (the eventual) King George VI, a decent man suffering from a debilitating speech disorder.  He stutters.  Through his wife (Helena Bonham Carter), George engages Lionel Logue (Rush), an eccentric Aussie with peculiar – though possibly effective – vocal techniques.

The King’s Speech is an actors’ showcase.  The verbal and social jousting between Firth and Rush is at the heart of the film, and when the two of them are sequestered in an office, experimenting with everything from recorded music to profanity-laced tirades, the movie is at its best.  It is Pygmalion in reverse, with commoner Lionel wielding power over blue-blooded George.

Looming in the background is all manner of social turmoil, including World War II, the abdication of George’s brother, the feckless Edward VIII, and the Great Depression.  Director Tom Hooper and screenwriter David Seidler try their damndest to link these monumental events to George’s personal struggle, but no matter how hard you try, and the filmmakers certainly do, you can’t gussy up a five-minute radio address to the same dramatic effect as, say, an invasion of Omaha Beach.   It is still just a five-minute radio address.

The King’s Speech is a small movie, often amusing but not very profound.  Despite Hooper’s attempts to make us sweat the fate of England, the overriding impression is that there is just one thing at stake:  George’s self-esteem.       Grade:  B

 

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Director:  Tom Hooper  Cast:  Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter, Guy Pearce, Timothy Spall, Derek Jacobi, Jennifer Ehle, Michael Gambon, Robert Portal, Richard M. Dixon  Release:  2010

 

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Complice1

 

A good deal of the romantic crime-drama Accomplices updates Romeo and Juliet for the wired generation.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that the kids in this version of embattled love don’t kindle their passion on anyone’s balcony – they peddle their bodies to middle-aged men found in Internet chat rooms.

Director Frederic Mermoud’s film weaves parallel plots, one involving the star-crossed lovers and the other about two aging detectives assigned to investigate when the boy is killed and the girl disappears.  Both story threads are compelling.  We want to know what happened to Vincent and Rebecca, the kids who took too many risks, but we’re also intrigued by the relationship between cops Herve and Karine, two haunted 40-somethings afraid to risk anything at all.

The film begins with the gruesome discovery of Vincent’s body, bloated and pale, floating in the waters of the Rhone.  From there, a series of flashbacks reveal Vincent’s and Rebecca’s first meeting at a cybercafé and subsequent courtship.  The second story works in reverse time as Herve and Karine unravel what led to Vincent’s murder.

Most of the screen time in Accomplices belongs to the young lovers, played marvelously by Cyril Descours and Nina Meurisse.  Vincent is a 20-year-old hustler, too old for adolescent hijinks but not so jaded that he isn’t entranced by high-school student Rebecca.  We do not learn how Vincent got involved in male prostitution.  Rebecca’s initiation into the dark side, on the other hand, is spelled out in great detail.  The seediness escalates; there is much bare flesh and ugly human nature on display.  Yet through it all, Vincent and Rebecca maintain a credible air of wounded innocence — a compliment to the young stars.

In the end, the stories of Vincent and Rebecca, and Herve and Karine, converge.  It’s bittersweet and satisfying, a final act of which I think Shakespeare would approve.       Grade:  B+

 

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Director:  Frederic Mermoud   Cast:  Gilbert Melki, Emmanuelle Devos, Cyril Descours, Nina Meurisse, Joana Preiss, Jeremy Azencott, Jeremy Kapone, Marc Rioufol, Yeelem Jappain, Clara Ponsot  Release:  2009

 

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RoyalT

 

“Quirky” is a style that can be tough to pull off.  When a filmmaker sets the right tone, the result can be delightful.  Ghost World got it right.  So did Wonder Boys – it had a story to tell, but what lingers are its off-the-wall attitude and images:  Michael Douglas in a ratty bathrobe, stoned out of his skull; a dead dog in a trunk; a police car rolling down a hill.

The Royal Tenenbaums aims for quirky, and it’s certainly packed with offbeat characters, but with one notable exception, it falls flat.  That exception will come as no surprise.  The venerable Gene Hackman, as family patriarch Royal Tenenbaum, is as usual a joy to behold.  Hackman’s aging father, befuddled and estranged from his brilliant-but-odd New York family, might (or might not) have cancer and a short time to live.  Having squandered his fortune and happy home life, Royal decides to attempt a family reconciliation.

This is where Tenenbaums misses the mark.  Although the Tenenbaum children are certainly eccentric, there is nothing remotely sympathetic about them.  Gwyneth Paltrow, as adopted “rebel” and erstwhile dramatist Margot, and Luke Wilson, as her ex-jock brother Richie, are presented as star-crossed lovers.  But the two of them sleepwalk through the movie in a morose condition straight out of Night of the Living Dead.  It would seem more of a kindness to drive a stake through their aching hearts than to place rings on their fingers.

Ben Stiller plays what – unfortunately for him – Ben Stiller plays extremely well: annoying.  His Chas Tenenbaum is a widower with two young boys and a gigantic chip on his shoulder.  If I were his estranged father, I would take one look at this obnoxious offspring and bolt for warmer climes.  Chas’s transformation at the end of the movie is utterly unconvincing – in fact, Tenenbaums’s entire happy ending is absurd.

There is lovably eccentric, and then there is irritatingly eccentric.  Offbeat is not always funny, and the road not taken does not always lead to wisdom.  Tenenbaums is a near miss in the realm of quirky, but a miss it certainly is.          Grade:  C-

 

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Director:  Wes Anderson  Cast:  Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, Danny Glover, Seymour Cassel, Kumar Pallana  Release:  2001

 

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Swan1

 

The problem with movies in which the main character begins to hallucinate is that, as a viewer, you are powerless.  The director, not you, gets to decide what’s “real” and what is not.  If he so chooses, anything goes:  Is that a reflection of the heroine in the mirror, or is it the image of a dead woman?  Are those bloody scratches on her body just a hallucination, or are they genuine?  As a mere member of the audience, you can only decide if the filmmaker is playing fair.

Director Darren Aronofsky in Black Swan goes a little too Freddy Krueger for my taste.  His protagonist, a young ballerina named Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), endures one too many surrealistic episodes – often accompanied by that cheapest of movie tricks, the dreaded LOUD SOUND EFFECT! – and these Grand Guignol excursions damage the dramatic flow and credibility of the story.

But Black Swan is never boring.  The acting is first rate, including Barbara Hershey as the creepiest stage mother this side of Kim Stanley in Frances, and Vincent Cassel as a man who has discovered there are no Human Resources departments in ballet companies, and thus uses sexual harassment of young dancers as a routine part of his “instruction.”

Portman stars as a young dancer whom everyone pressures because they believe she has talent but lacks the passion to fully capture the role of the Black Swan in Swan Lake.  Portman dances well, and she proves she can fake orgasms with the best of them, but … all this talk of a Best Actress award?  There are scores of close-ups of Portman’s face, looking tense.  Is that how you win an Oscar?  I think I prefer Annette Bening’s more nuanced performance in The Kids Are All Right.

From press reports it’s apparent that Aronofsky was aiming for a film in the tradition of Roman Polanski’s early thrillers.  What he delivers is All About Eve meets A Nightmare on Elm Street.  His film is atmospheric and packed with histrionics, which is entertaining stuff but not particularly memorable.        Grade:  B

 

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Director:  Darren Aronofsky  Cast:  Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder, Benjamin Millepied, Ksenia Solo, Kristina Anapau  Release:  2010

 

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Blue1

 

I don’t know a thing about director David Lynch’s personal history.  I haven’t read any Lynch biographies, and am not even sure where he hails from (although I have a vague recollection that it might be Montana).  But after watching his films, I get the impression that young Mr. Lynch was raised prim and proper, a good little Protestant boy who on one fateful day wandered across to the wrong side of the railroad tracks – and was subjected to one massive dose of weird.

I speculate about that because filmmaker Lynch is famously obsessed with the macabre, the odd, and the surreal, and Blue Velvet is a prime example.  Essentially a Hitchcockian spin on a Hardy Boys story, Blue Velvet follows young Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), a college student who on one sunny afternoon discovers a severed human ear in a vacant field and decides to conduct his own investigation.  As the story progresses, Jeffrey learns that it is a strange world, indeed.  But whereas Hitchcock used humor to break tension, Lynch opts for bizarre interludes.  There is one scene near the midpoint in which – completely out of the blue – a gay man croons Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” to a rapt, crazed Dennis Hopper.  The scene still has me shaking my head.  What on earth has it to do with the plot — or anything whatsoever?

But it wouldn’t be a Lynch film without such scenes.  Sociopathic Frank Booth (Hopper) and pals are unfathomable to Jeffrey and to us, and yet Lynch makes them feel very real.  Isn’t that a great recipe for what’s truly frightening in life?

Jeffrey learns that there are two sides to everything.  “I’m seeing something that was always hidden,” he tells his girlfriend Sandy.  The small town he calls home is a bucolic Mayberry in daytime – and a dangerous haven for joyriding thugs at night.  Jeffrey has a virginal, sweet-faced blonde (Laura Dern) to woo at a Norman Rockwell soda shop – and a rough-sex-loving lounge singer (Isabella Rossellini) to corrupt him in bed.  There are red robins, blue velvet, and a “Yellow Man.”  There is weirdness galore, or, as Sandy and Jeffrey repeatedly tell each other, “a strange world.”

All of which makes me wonder again:  What in the world did young David Lynch stumble into when he crossed those railroad tracks?        Grade:  B+

 

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Director:  David Lynch  Cast:  Isabella Rossellini, Kyle MacLachlan, Dennis Hopper, Laura Dern, Hope Lange, Dean Stockwell, George Dickerson, Priscilla Pointer, Frances Bay, Jack Harvey  Release:  1986

 

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Dragon1

 

As I was watching How to Train Your Dragon, I kept thinking of another film:  Werner Herzog’s 2005 documentary, Grizzly Man.  In Herzog’s movie, a naïve young fool named Timothy Treadwell believes he can best-friend-forever wild bears, thereby ignoring thousands of years of human history.  Things do not end well for the optimistic Mr. Treadwell.

In How to Train Your Dragon, one of the lessons seems to be:  Animals are our pals, kindred spirits to all of mankind.  “Everything we know about you guys is wrong,” says the young hero, Hiccup, to a dragon.  That’s probably what the Grizzly Man thought, right before he became breakfast.  Things, of course, do not end so badly for the heroes in Dragon – this is a children’s movie, after all – but the story has little, sorry, bearing on reality.

I suppose if you are eight years old, this animated confection is the cat’s meow.  If, however, you are older, it’s a barely tolerable waste of 98 minutes.  The story is unoriginal, the gags are aimed at pre-teens, and much of what transpires is preposterous.  Young Hiccup, drawn as a teenager, is voiced by an actor who is nearly 30 and whose voice sounds exactly that, which is both bizarre and distracting.

As for the celebrated 3-D special effects … I didn’t see it in 3-D, but according to Roger Ebert, I didn’t miss much.  Says Ebert: “The 3-D adds nothing but the opportunity to pay more to see a distracting and unnecessary additional dimension.”  I’ll take his word for it.

How to Train Your Dragon is well-meaning and well-drawn and well … very nice for eight-year-olds.  It is a Gumby movie with more expensive production values.      Grade:  B-

 

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Directors:  Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders  Voice Talent:  Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, America Ferrera  Release:  2010

 

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Train1

 

Bob Dole, that cantankerous old coot from Kansas, made news during the 1996 presidential campaign when he attacked a relatively obscure British movie called Trainspotting.  According to Wikipedia, “U.S. Senator Bob Dole accused it of moral depravity and glorifying drug use … although he later admitted that he had not actually seen the film.”

Dole lost the 1996 election, but he made a good point.  I give Trainspotting an above-average grade because the movie is inventive, rollicking entertainment – but it does glorify heroin users.  My complaint (and Dole’s) is nothing new; critics carped in the 1960s about Butch and Sundance, and Bonnie and Clyde, for their alleged bad influence on youthful moviegoers. 

But whining about “sinful” cinema is a lost cause.  The truth of the matter is that if you put a clump of putrid dog vomit on the big screen, someone, somewhere, will spearhead a cult following for said dog vomit.  There is an audience for just about anything.  (Incidentally, I am not comparing Trainspotting to dog vomit.)

Danny Boyle’s gritty depiction of Scottish drug addicts does have tragic moments, but they are glossed over as Boyle moves on to other concerns:  a frantic pace, clever dialogue and – above all – a desire to amuse his audience.  As druggie Renton says in the film, “People think it’s [drug abuse] all about misery and desperation and death … but what they forget is the pleasure of it.  Otherwise we wouldn’t do it.”

Trainspotting is all about pleasing oneself.  For every dead baby scene, there is a hilarious bit about “the worst toilet in Scotland,” or the perils of pummeling a dog’s posterior with a pellet gun.  Bob Dole was correct:  the movie does glorify drug use. But it is also glorious fun.      Grade:  B

 

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Director:  Danny Boyle  Cast:  Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd, Robert Carlyle, Kelly Macdonald, Peter Mullan, James Cosmo, Pauline Lynch, Shirley Henderson  Release:  1996

 

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